Morning all. The coffee is brewing, yesterdays snow is melting and I am ready to see what today’s sentence starter brings. So lets set those timers and see what we come up with. Timers ready and off we go!
I like the semi-sidelined during a moment of importance angle. Not sure what the story is, but I think having someone accustomed to looking at what they are doing one way be forced to adjust to a different view is a fun thing to play around with. Just need to find the actual story.
Thursday, February 20th: The circles were not naturally made.
The circles were not naturally made. That was easy to see at first glance even through the wavering view presented on the screen. The stones were placed deliberately. By who and when was the question they would need to answer. He knew the biologists, geologists and a host of other oligists were working out when and how the lake overflowed this area, submerging what might have once been human occupied land.
He knew his investigation would show what was where under the water. Between the two of them they could get a reasonable start in understanding the area. “Are the divers ready?” he asked.
The question was relayed and the message returned that all was a go. There were two teams being sent down on the first pass.
‘Well second if you count the unmanned scanner.’ It was that first scan that showed the circles in the first place. Now the team was being sent down to get closer images and to direct them. The two teams had different goals. One would try to find the extent of the area so they would no roughly how large an area they needed to survey and the other team would focus on the details of the circles. They arould hopefully bring back evidence they could use to start the dating process.
As he directed the teams to start the investigation he regretted that his still healing knee wouldn’t let him join the dive. The surgeons who put his leg back together were most insistent that his leg and most especially the knee they replaced after the car accident need to not go down to depth, at least not now. There was hope that at some point, it could be managed. For now, his stitches were still holding things in place and he had a brace to keep him from moving too much.
The restrictive brace was a compromise. He was needed as lead on the team and he was not going to pass up this opportunity even if he had to stay on the ship above the water line. As he watched the divers sink beneath the water he reminded himself that they too were professionals. It wasn’t like the old days when the divers he went down with knew diving but not archaeology. This team knew both and would do their jobs. His chafing was more a desire to be with them than a failure of trust.
‘And I already warned them I would be cranky,’ he told himself. He took a deep breath and waited as they submerged to the correct area. As it was quite some distance down, the wait wasn’t short.
‘Pottery,’ he thought. ‘Some sort of pottery would be ideal.’ He knew the settlement would be too early for coins but he hoped for pottery.
He allowed himself to stare into the distance in a sort of haze as he waited. His leg was throbbing and he had taken some ibuprofen earlier. He would wait to take anything of higher-grade pain killing until later when he went to bed. He didn’t want his focus impaired and the pain killers always made him feel as though he was watching the world through a gauzy cloth. It helped with the pain but made him feel fuzzy.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he told himself. ‘This is more important than discomfort.’ He adjusted his leg slightly to shift the pressure.
The cameras clicked on, showing the team arrived. Glad for the external focus, he studied the images they sent back.
Ten til Midnight 